Language and literature

N. Brooks

1. Language and literature need to be compared and contrasted for the benefit of both; if there are areas of difference, these must be definable, and it is our purpose now to identify and describe such differences from the point of view of the language classroom. If seemingly inadequate and arbitrary definitions of literature are proposed, their aim is less to define literature than to distinguish between it and language. The risk of implying that the two may be mutually exclusive is not absent, yet a little reflection reminds us that a dichotomy between language and literature is as absurd as a dichotomy between child and man. There is no sharp line of demarcation, but a continuum. Literature presupposes language, though the reverse is not true; childhood without manhood is commonplace, but manhood without childhood is unthinkable.

Relationship of Literature to Language

1. Literature is wholly and inevitably rooted in language, and it is no surprise to rediscover in literature certain features that are peculiar to and basic in language. No more than language can literature separate itself from the speaker-hearer-situation trichotomy. As in simple dialogue, the intent  even though only latent  and the means of conveying a message must be assumed, and the message must be about something. A dream in itself cannot even be called language, though once verbalized, it might well become literature. As the speaker’s behaviour is inevitably conditioned by that of the hearer, so the artist’s creative acts are influenced by the real or the presumed response evoked in his audience.

2. We may at this point consider the question: Why literature in the language class at all? Is it not better to give the student a thorough grounding in the language skills before he attempts the study of literature? Language classes can and indeed do flourish as if literature did not exist or had never existed. And there are many college teachers who bluntly say: “Let the language skills be taught and taught well in schools; we will provide the study of literature and all the more successfully for the natural companionship of the two.” It is frequently said that formal education should prepare the student against the life he is later to lead no less than for it. Surely an aesthetic experience in literature is one in which the most universal participation may be expected. Everyone uses words, who will be Philistine enough to deny that everyone, at least according to his interests and capacity, should have some knowledge and experience of the fine art of words, as we find it expresses in literature?

3. There are language classes in which it is indeed assumed that one of the goals of learning is the appreciation of literature, but that the student is first of all and most of all to be provided with the skills and tools with which he may at some later date study literature. It is undoubtedly an error to take the eventual literary experience for granted. Rather, it is in class itself, in the traditional atmosphere of formal education and under the guidance of a trained teacher, that the study of literature should be launched. On no account should literary history be substituted for literature itself. These are two different things, the latter being a fine art and the former more nearly a science. In the language class, only an intimate acquaintance with works of literature is justifiable.

4. As language teachers introduce literature into their course they cannot be too careful about what they choose for their students to read. What passes for literature in a great many cases would be given short shrift by most competent critics. It is likely that many of the works frequently read as literature in the languages taught in our school today would be impossible to justify on any grounds other than crass expediency. One of the most serious professional obligations in our fields is the establishing of criteria that will relegate to the scrap heap a vast quantity of printed matter that masquerades as literature in language classes.

The Comprehension of Literature

1. What does the reader bring to the study of his first literary work in a foreign language? (Its value to him is directly related to the background, the attitude, and the linguistic capacity with which he approaches it.) Acquaintance in the mother tongue with the plot, characters, atmosphere, and general significance of a story may well be an excellent preliminary step to the study of that story in the new language.

2. By what steps may the language student gain what can be called knowledge on a literary level of a work of literature? By the same steps he presumably uses in reading a literary work in English. Reading between the lines  and this is most important in literary study presupposes an accurate and comprehending reading of the lines themselves. In any story there will be first of all a plot in which something happens to someone, at some time and in some place. If answers to simple questions where and when are not immediately obvious, that is good reason for the teacher to bring them up. If nothing happens, but all is atmosphere, mood, introspection, or background detail, this too is important and calls for observation and comment. Who are the characters? In what terms does the author present and describe them? What do they do or say? What is the manner of their speech and dress, their conduct toward people and affairs? What is the problem with which the characters are to deal, and how soon and in what terms is it made explicit? How does the sequence of events move on to a climax and a conclusion? How does the character reveal itself or change as events proceed? In all this the author will naturally leave much to be inferred, but at the beginning it is of first importance to comprehend and restate, with whatever brevity and simplification seem appropriate, what the author says.

3. But there is a second step of even greater importance. The literary artist’s words and statements will of course be disappointing to the reader who takes them merely at their face value. The author wished not only to demonstrate and to prove, but to impress and persuade, and he counts upon the power of metaphor to make his words convey much more than they actually say.

4. As a third step we may ask the question, “How well has the author accomplished what he set out to do?” No reader who has taken the first step and who has been encouraged and guided through the second is likely to remain entirely neutral when this question is asked. He will have enjoyed the experience of following the author’s presentation or he will not, he will have agreed with the ideas set forth in the story or disagreed, and he will value judgements to give of the author’s performance as an artist. Of course it is a prime responsibility of the teacher to provide the student with the means of making this criticism in the foreign language.

5. Are these steps to be taken without recourse to the mother tongue? Most emphatically, yes. For a wholesale reversion to English at this point is not only an inglorious admission of defeat on the part of the teacher but a betrayal of the very principles upon which the study of contemporary language is founded.

dichotomy − a division or the process of dividing into two especially mutually exclusive or contradictory groups.

trichotomy − a division into three parts.

continuum − an uninterrupted ordered sequence.

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